Thwaite's lips drew back from his teeth. "I'm fighting it," he said shortly, picking up his work again. On the bed where he sat were scattered steel cartridge clips. He was going through them with a small file, carefully cutting a deep cross in the soft nose of every bullet. Nearby a heavy-caliber rifle leaned against a wardrobe. Other things were in evidence--boots, canteens, knapsacks, the tough clothing a man needs in the _mato_. "You're looking for _it_." Thwaite's eyes burned feverishly. "Yes. Do you think I'm crazy?" * * * * * Dalton pulled a rickety chair toward him and sat down straddling it. "I don't know," he said slowly. "_It_ was very likely a creature of the last interglacial period. The ice may have finished its kind." "The ice never touched these equatorial forests." Thwaite smiled unpleasantly. "And the Indians and old settlers down here have stories--about a thing that calls in the _mato_, that can paralyze a man with fear. _Currupira_ is their name for it. "When I remembered those stories they fell into place alongside a lot of others from different countries and times--the Sirens, for instance, and the Lorelei. Those legends are ancient. But perhaps here in the Amazon basin, in the forests that have never been cut and the swamps that have never been drained, the _currupira_ is still real and alive. I _hope_ so!" "Why?" "I want to meet it. I want to show it that men can destroy it with all its unholy power." Thwaite bore down viciously on the file and the bright flakes of lead glittered to the floor beside his feet. Dalton watched him with eyes of compassion. He heard the frog music swelling outside, a harrowing reminder of ultimate blasphemous insult, and he felt the futility of argument. "Remember, I heard it too," Dalton said. "And I sensed what you did. That voice or some combination of frequencies or overtones within it, is resonant to the essence of evil--the fundamental life-hating self-destroying evil in man--even to have glimpsed it, to have heard the brainless beast mocking, was an outrage to humanity that a man must...." Dalton paused, got a grip on himself. "But, consider--the outrage was wiped out, humanity won its victory over the monster a long time ago. What if it isn't quite extinct? That record was fifty thousand years old." "What did you do with the record?" Thwaite looked up sharply. "I obliterated that--the voice and the pictures that went with it from the film before I returned it to the Museum." Thwaite sighed deeply. "Good. I was damning myself for not doing that before I left." The linguist said, "I think it answered my question as much as I want it answered. The origin of speech--lies in the will to power, the lust to dominate other men by preying on the weakness or evil in them.